Sea Control - Sea Control 370 - NATO's Shifting Approach to Strategic Stability, Defense & Deterrence with Nicolò Fasola

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Links1. NATO 2022 Strategic Concept.

Hey, folks, it's Jared. If you hear that siren in the background, that is our new host alert. So, Zofia Wolford is making her first appearance for us today, and she's joined by Nicolo Fasola to discuss NATO's new strategic direction. This episode was also edited and produced on the continent by Alexia Bulagi. I'd like to pause here to highlight our local chapters, whether you're in South Korea, Egypt, Singapore, France, New York, India, or the Caribbean, chances are there's a CIMSEC local chapter near you. You can find a full listing of local chapters and contact information on our website at simsec.org, so if you're interested, please reach out and get involved. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Village Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pot of iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts.

And with that, Kimber's Men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Welcome, everyone. This is Sea Control, a podcast by the Center for International Maritime Security. My name is Sofia Walford, and you're watching the Sea Control podcast. And today I'm joined by Nicola Fasola. Nicola is a doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham, incoming adjunct professor of international relations at the University of Bologna. and until very recently, Nikola was also a junior Eisenhower Fellow at NATO's Defence College in Rome.

Hi Sofia and hello everyone. Thanks for having me here. Today, we will discuss NATO's new strategic concept and the latest NATO summit that took place at the end of June. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, the security environment of NATO and Europe has changed significantly, prompting the alliance to propose significant changes to its force posture, increasing its troop numbers from 40,000 to 300,000 on its eastern flank. In light of this, Nicolai, what can you tell us about the new strategic concept? How is it different from the one that was adopted in 2010 before the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine?

So, yes, I would say that at the macro level, to begin with, A first important element to note is that the new strategic concept does indeed a good job in identifying the new main trends in international relations in the strategic landscape surrounding NATO. The world that is captured by the new strategic concept is, in fact, completely different from the one described by the previous concept, the one of 2010. And on the basis of such reasonable assessment, the alliance states the need to adapt its posture considerably. And this is neither banal nor irrelevant, considering in particular the typical inertia that characterizes large institutional apparatuses. And NATO is one of these. NATO is heavily bureaucratized. Sometimes you feel like spinning on a hamster's wheel while working there. and also has a military nature and military organizations renownedly are very slow adapting to change.

So this is a first striking point. And I would say that maybe NATO is not really the most successful alliance in history, but for sure, this proves that the alliance is not brain dead. Another major point of difference vis-a-vis 2010's strategic concept is that, well, Russia for the first time is recognized as a threat in a post-Cold War strategic concept. And indeed, it's not just recognized as a threat, but also as the principal threat to Euro-Atlantic security. If in 2010, the Euro-Atlantic area was recognized at peace, nowadays, the Euro-Atlantic area is recognized by NATO as being not anymore at peace.

And that's Russia's fault. So such statement is relevant because it crystallizes consensus on a traditionally highly divisive issue among the allies. The issue being the nature of Russia. For example, we have Turkey and Hungary playing a bit on the NATO side and a bit on the Russian side, trying to balance between their two different souls. So to say, historically, we have instead other allies like France, Germany and Southern European allies, including Italy, who have been more friendly, if you want, or more accommodating at the very least towards Russia historically. And other countries like the US, the UK and other Eastern Central European countries, including Poland and the Baltics, who instead have always been quite opposite to Russia. Well, it seems that all the allies in this new strategic concept agree that Russia is a threat and this is quite relevant. Yeah, that's a very good point, Nicolai. I remember that quite recently, before and during actually the NATO summit, we have heard rumours that the Hungarian government found the text of the strategy concept a bit problematic,

especially because of its text on Russia. But in the end, we have seen that the Ghanian government also approved the concept. Well, yes, indeed, I find that a very likely perspective. As I said, the nature of Russia, the securitization of Russia, indeed, has always been quite a contentious issue. And just consider that till the end of June, till the adoption of this very strategic concept, Russia was still formally a partner of NATO and actually a special partner of NATO together with Georgia and Ukraine. Of course, the practical implementation of such status had been suspended already in 2014, following the first aggression on Ukraine. But still, on paper, Russia retained still such a role. And also consider that even many of the first Cold War strategic concepts of NATO did not securitize Russia in explicit terms.

For the one thing, the Washington Treaty, many of the first Cold War strategic concepts of NATO did not securitize Russia in explicit terms. For the one thing, the Washington Treaty, the founding treaty of the alliance, does not specify and does not identify an enemy explicitly. But neither did NATO's first strategic concepts of 1949 and 1953. The Soviet Union was not identified as the existential threat for NATO. Of course, we have the famous quote, an abused quote by Lord Ismail, the first Secretary General of NATO, according to which NATO had the purpose of keeping the Americans in, the Germans down, the Soviets out. But okay, this is not really a statement of hostility, to be honest, it's just a reasonable statement depicting reality as it is. And it will be only with the strategic concept of 1957 that the Soviet threat for NATO will be detailed at length. So already during the Cold War, when it would have been obvious to identify explicitly a Soviet Union as a threat, already back then for more than, for pretty much a decade, Moscow was not the official enemy. And we have seen this being reproposed now in the 2000s, because as I said, between 2010 and 2022, still Russia was a partner of NATO, notwithstanding the huge changes in the strategic landscapes, which took place at least since 2008 to 2014. But besides Russia, honestly, there were many other contentious points.

For example, in the new strategic concept, China and the Indo-Pacific are finally given high priority in NATO's strategy, in NATO's future. They were mentioned for the very first time in a strategic concept, which recognizes that there are challenges rising there, and those must be faced with a wide array of means, but also and chiefly dialogue. Dialogue is still recognized as possible, either via China and within the NATO approach to the Indo-Pacific in more general. Well, the fact that China and the Indo-Pacific have been given such a priority,

have been mentioned at all, Well, it's important because I remember discussions, I took part in discussions with other clinicians, military personnel, NATO personnel, about the new strategic concept just in December and January this year, and still the issue of whether or not to include China in the strategic concept was debated. And also, there was a huge cleavage difference of perspectives between the US, totaling favor of including them, and the European allies with the exclusion of the UK, basically. Also, and speaking of regions, the MENA region and the Sahel seem to be quite deprioritized. And this, again, is a change with respect to the previous NATO strategic approach. They are mentioned in the concept, but that sounds more like a ritual statement than anything serious and substantial. And also they're mentioned in terms of cooperation with partners, but cooperative security has never been the chief task of NATO and likely it will never be. And speaking of tasks, another contentious issue that the allies had to square, had to find agreement on, were indeed the three core tasks.

The three core tasks that were laid out in the 2010 strategic concept are still there. They have not changed. And this already is a big point. We still have defence and deterrence, crisis management and cooperative security as the three main tasks of NATO. There is just a slight variation in the wording of the second one, which becomes crisis prevention and management. But what changes, though, is the relative weight assigned to these different tasks. So we have common defence, that is defence and deterrence, DND, which acquires clear priority over both cooperative security, and this is no surprise, and crisis management. And this indeed is a big fact, because since after 9-11, crisis management was most probably NATO's top priority. And not only D&D, defence and deterrence, acquires primacy over these two other tasks, but most likely, and in light of that, these other two tasks, crisis management and cooperative security, will likely be implemented in light and in support to defence and deterrence.

For example, I expect comparative security arrangements between NATO and partners, partners being both states and organizations like the EU, to point more in the direction of forced generation capability development in support of NATO's conventional efforts, especially on the European soil. Also, in the effort to balance against China and less on transversal issues or more value-based kind of cooperation. And indeed, in parallel to these reasonings about the core tasks, the allies have also managed to agree on the recognition of the importance of a rather holistic set of trends. and problems with transversal value, irrespective of the core tasks, namely climate change, emerging disruptive technologies, gender equality, cyberspace, and so on and so forth, issues with which NATO has grappled for a long time, which have been mentioned in different communiques,

summit documents, and operational-level documents, but which now are an official part of the highest strategic document of the Alliance. Yeah, you mentioned, Nicola, that defence and deterrence now became a high priority for NATO since Russia's invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. Do you think NATO will be able to deliver such a substantial change in the near term? Well, yes, NATO's D&D posture has changed considerably in Europe, at the very least, but most potentially at global, universal level, so to say. On the European soil, we see a transition from a so-called posture of deterrence by tripwire, if you want, to a posture of deterrence by defense. Posture of deterrence by tripwire is a posture of deterrence based on a sort of signpost force, which signals commitment mainly, a force which is relatively small in size, relatively flexible and lightly armed.

which provides a first line of defence and engagement which is mainly designed to buy time against an opponent when the opponent attacks, a force which is designed to engage with the enemy while a more substantial force is put together and deployed to the front. And this was the deterrence posture adopted by NATO after the Wales and Warsaw summits,

a posture which concretised in the enhanced forward presence and a tailored forward presence. And now we see the day NATO shifting more decisively towards a posture of deterrence by defence, if you want, wherein the more substantial force, which I mentioned just two seconds ago, is there already. It's pre-deployed and it's ready to use. And as you hinted at a couple of minutes ago,

NATO is stepping up considerably already. is troop commitment in Eastern Europe and Southeastern Europe. And it's not just a matter of quantity, but also a matter of quality or more precisely organizational arrangements. In fact, all these troops that will be deployed in the eastern flank of NATO will be most likely combat ready. Their organizational size will be stepped up from battalion to brigade size And also we'll see new pre-deployed command and control structures and equipment already there and ready to be used in case of an attack.

And indeed, personally, I would welcome a further step in NATO's changing deterrence posture. I would actually welcome a change, a transition from a posture of deterrence by punishment to a posture of deterrence by denial. Indeed, a posture of deterrence by punishment is a posture which basically says, watch out, my dear enemy, if you do that, you'll suffer terrible consequences. Basically, it's a posture based on retribution. The enemy does X, and in response to that, NATO would do Y and Z. A posture of deterrence by denial instead, well, it's a posture that says, well, enemy, watch out, because you will not even be able to do this and that, because we'll stop you beforehand, we're going to target you heavily, and you'll suffer disproportionate damage even before you manage to do anything to us. And it's not really just a matter of signaling, but also, most importantly, a matter of capabilities and doctrines of forced employment. And at the very least, to adopt such a posture of deterrence by denial, NATO would be required to develop a thicker and more layered system of anti-access air denial assets on European soil.

And why do I advocate for that? Because we see that Russia is able to deploy very fastly and is able to inflict disproportionate damage on the adversary very quickly. And also when its troops are on foreign soil, it's very difficult to push them back in a way and they cause heavy destruction, great destruction. So to respond to Russia with strategy of deterrence by punishment might be too late to face such a threat. Of course, all of this, this transition has limits. There are already worrisome reports emerging about the actual capability of NATO to finance this transition to a more muscular military posture in Eastern Europe. And these records for sure mention the current economic conjuncture and the very meager forecasts of Western economic performance for the next five years, at the very least. Of course, also, there are problems of interoperability among NATO forces to be solved. Allies proceed at different paces in their modernization processes, in their military modernization processes. And these paces, indeed, are increasingly different. There is a huge difference between the US and European allies, of course, but there is also a huge difference among European allies. And pretty much these differences basically repropose the old cleavage between Western and Eastern Europe.

Eastern European allies of NATO, which have been able to improve considerably their force structures and capabilities, but which, under many aspects, still lag behind the Western peers. And indeed, this is a big problem. There's the limit, potential limit, to the credibility of the contribution of some Eastern European militaries to this new deterrence by defense posture. Probably with the exclusion of Poland, there are doubts raised about the ability of Eastern Central European allies and Southeastern European allies to contribute effectively to a conventional and high intensity war on NATO's side without having to rely too much on the Western allies. Of course, if capabilities are not redistributed pretty much equally across the allies, well, that's a problem for the effectiveness of the war effort. And also there's a problem of force generation, because if NATO agrees on deploying that many forces in Eastern Europe, and irrespective of whether or not that structure is going to be functional in case of an actual fight against Russia,

Well, those troops are deployed there and those troops will be taken away from other tasks. And that's not a low number of troops. That's a considerable number of troops. And the more troops are deployed in Eastern Europe, the less troops will be available to NATO to deploy elsewhere. And that's a problem, especially if NATO wants to be serious in its counterbalancing of China in the Indo-Pacific, which most probably will require a considerable military engagement of sorts. Yes, I think you're right, Nicola. We will probably see quite a lot of debate within NATO regarding who is going to bear the cost of increasing troop numbers in Eastern Europe. But speaking of interoperability, Sweden and Finland will be joining the alliance in the near future. So I was wondering how that will change NATO's maritime posture and if it's reflected already in the new strategic concept. Well, the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO is something which happened together and in parallel to the adoption of the strategic concepts,

but is not enshrined in the strategic concept as such. For sure, that's an important change in NATO's force composition, in NATO's life in general, I would say, even from a purely political perspective. For sure, the accession of Sweden and Finland per se would not create considerable additional problems in terms of interoperability. Because Sweden and Finland have been partners of NATO for decades, they have been very independent, prolific, efficient and effective partners of NATO, and they have highly effective and functioning militaries of their own, which already operate according to NATO standards. So the integration of those forces in NATO's forces from a maritime perspective, but more in general, would not be a huge problem. But for sure, the accession of Sweden and Finland changes a bit in the positive direction, the strategic environment for NATO, also and especially from a maritime naval perspective. Well, for example, the Baltic Sea now is, yes, increasingly militarized, but is also most potentially less contested to the extent that basically it's just Russia as a non-NATO country having access to the Baltic Sea. A Baltic Sea, which can be easily closed off by NATO, given its preponderance of local forces.

And that would be a problem for Russia if Russia wants to maintain access by a sea to the exclave of Kaliningrad, which is increasingly becoming more of a problem than an asset for Russia. But also, most importantly, most probably, in the Baltic Sea, thanks to the accession of Sweden and Finland, is going to curtail considerably the ability of Russia to access and more in general exploit, well, its St. Petersburg ports. And that's a huge blow to Russia's naval doctrine in the region. Also, thanks to the accession of Sweden and Finland, it is now possible to rapidly reinforce the Baltic republics in case of a Russian attack, also via land. And therefore, it's increasingly possible now for NATO to defend the sovereignty of three key allies, honestly, and not only three key allies, but three of the allies which are more exposed to direct Russian kinetic attacks. Also, by having basically, so to say, conquered the whole of the Scandinavian peninsula, now NATO will have a greater, easier access to the so-called Arctic route. And that will be very relevant for the years to come as the global competition moves also towards the poles.

Just to stick with defence and deterrence a bit, over the past six months we have seen NATO's approach to strategic stability change in response to the war in Ukraine. Can you tell us a bit more about this change and what implications it will have on arms control? Well, sure. NATO talks indeed about strategic stability in the new strategic concept. concept. Now we have first of all to understand what NATO really means with strategic stability. There are different definitions of strategic stability and different definitions highlight different aspects of stability itself and therefore on such basis different recipes could be adopted to grant strategic stability. In general terms we can define strategic stability as a sort of situation, a context in which the disincentives to change the status quo

are not, well, are greater than the incentives to change the status quo. You can also define in a more Cold War way, and actually this is the way that the Russians prefer to define strategic stability, you can define it as a state of affairs reducing or even zeroing the incentives for a party for conducting a disarming first strike on the enemy, mainly in nuclear terms. Whatever the definition, there's the key question of how to pursue strategic stability. And usually that happens via a combination of defense and deterrence and arms control regimes, both nuclear and conventional domains. What has been NATO's role in preserving uh in the preservation of strategic stability so far so let's say till

the adoption of this new strategic concept well on the nuclear side nato is well benefits from u.s extended deterrence umbrella and also benefits from the nuclear forces rather independent of the uk and france and nato on the other hand well has been more of a platform for discussing and monitoring nuclear issues among allies than a primary actor in the field. Also, notably, NATO has always stated its agreement with the principles of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but has always been de facto opposed to any further steps towards the adoption of a proper nuclear ban treaty. On the conventional side of strategic deterrence, NATO has always been acting as a sort of intermediary, basically voicing, echoing individual allies' positions in terms of conventional military stability on the European soil in particular,

and also making sure that the individual allies, well, were in compliance with regulations of a series of treaties, including the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, the Open Skies Treaties, and so on and so forth. On this side, however, and actually that's also true for the nuclear side, well, these disagreements are no more. The CFE was disbanded de facto in 2007-2008. Open Skies Treaty died under Trump. And honestly, in terms of preservation of conventional stability, the work that was conducted within the NATO-Russia Council was very important. But now, well, that doesn't seem to be possible anymore. In the new strategic concept, it seems that NATO will be adopting a less dialogical approach to strategic stability, which is coherent with the re-emphasization of defense and deterrence over other core tasks, but also reflects a state of things within which, well, NATO-Russia dialogue in general is not at its brightest. So are we going to be seeing a sort of complete abandonment by NATO of any arms control talks? Well, it doesn't seem the case. Arms control talks are still emphasised or at least mentioned in the new strategic concept.

But most probably, in practical terms, in the action of NATO, it will be the case. arms control will not be prioritized in the implementation of the strategic concept and in NATO's approach towards achieving strategic stability, which will be based mainly on the reinforcement of NATO's defense and deterrence posture. I don't see any willingness to negotiate with Russia on any issues, be them conventional military stability issues or nuclear stability issues, and the NATO-Russia Council is basically dead. Interestingly, however, the same approach to strategic stability seems to be applied to both main competitors of NATO, both Russia and China.

As I said before, NATO might be wanting to still engage in meaningful dialogue with China, but for example, and in nuclear terms, I find it highly unlikely that China will agree on signing any nuclear arms control or reduction treaty with the US or NATO in general without Russia also being a part of it. Yes, I think at this point we cannot really be very optimistic

about the future of arms control. Finally, we touched upon this already with you, Nicolae, but it sounds like the new strategic concept is a very ambitious one, which means that we will probably see some challenges to its implementation, especially if NATO member states continue to face significant economic challenges in the next few years. What do you think about the feasibility of the new concept

and recent proposals to boost NATO troops' presence in Eastern Europe? Well, yes, this new strategic concept of NATO is very ambitious, and the fact that it is very ambitious is at the same time Very positive and quite problematic. But it is positive, obviously, because this is what NATO needs now. As I mentioned before, NATO, rather than use strategic concept, does quite an accurate job pointing out the ends, ways and means of the alliance. There are some critics about the, how to say, the superficial level of some statements that are enshrined in the strategic concept. But those critics are, to be honest, misplaced. It's not the task of a strategic concert to lay out operational level, the operational level implementation of the ends, ways and means of the alliance. And if successfully implemented, NATO will be able to continue along its unique path of adaptation and will be able to grant itself strategic edge vis-a-vis peer competitors over the need to long term.

But of course, there's also the negative side, the problematic side to being ambitious, because the risk of failure becomes very, very high. NATO will be bound to failure if it will not resolve a series of long-lasting problems that NATO has been suffering from since forever, basically, and especially since the Great Adaptation, so to say, of the 1990s. There's, first of all, a problem of prioritization between tasks and threats. We see already this at a lower level happening in relation to the Ukraine war, to the new Ukraine war. The Allies were very united in their stances against Russia at the very beginning of the war. Now, still, there is a strong signaling of commitment, but internally, the unity of political parties, governments, and so on and so forth across Europe is starting to crumble. Also, consider that the Allies might have agreed on a prioritization of tasks and threats now, but the world itself might be changing considerably over the short term. And we might end up being in the same situation we were in back in 2010, when NATO agreed on a strategic concept.

And then four years after, Ukraine was invaded by Russia, and this changed considerably the strategic landscape. But we had to wait until this year to see that enshrined in NATO's strategic concept. Then there's a problem of overstretch. So we have seen the alliance enlarging consistently, both in terms of membership and in terms of tasks taken over. However, this cannot proceed forever, especially so in a world of finite resources. And this brings me to the following problem, which is indeed a problem of resources. that's true even more so today considering the present bad economic conjuncture and considering that all the allied governments will be tackling a severe economic and potentially financial crisis

in the following years uh growing inflation uh growing these inequalities and so on and so forth a lot of resources, financial resources, will have to be allocated to resolving that kind of problems, and that will mean necessarily less resources available for defence expenditures. Of course, a greater cooperation between NATO and the EU, for example, two big institutions, may help somehow creating some sort of economies of scales, synergies between the two organisations which together might be able to achieve greater goals, greater objectives than they would be able to do individually. However, this will not solve the long lasting, ever present problem of NATO relative to burden sharing. So the allies really will have to sit down and have a serious talk and draw a serious implementation roadmap to increase that spending in a wise way, in an effective way, and actually do that for you.

And finally, I will say there's an overarching potential problem of coherence. Coherence between the two different souls of NATO, so to say, the realist soul and the liberal soul. The realist soul, which sees NATO as mainly a military alliance, which serves the purpose of security and which has to focus on purely military related security issues. And the liberal soul of NATO, which sees NATO as a beacon of light in social and political terms, NATO as the defender of a liberal order, NATO as a defender of liberal democratic values on a universal basis, on a universal level. Well, throughout the history of NATO, these two souls have clashed against each other several times, and so in the future, NATO will have to think carefully how to pursue its security and uphold liberal democratic values without the one goal going to the detriment of the achievement of the other goal. That would be particularly tricky. If anything, it would be important to strike a balance between these two different souls of NATO for an issue of credibility. And in order to be able to effectively contrast and counteract from a rhetorical perspective, narrative perspective, but also from a factual perspective, Russian claims and accusations that see NATO as just an imperialist power, which is directed towards crashing all other states' interests at the global level. unfortunately that's all the time we have for now nicolo thank you so much for joining us and thanks to our listeners for tuning in today see you next time thank you everybody and goodbye

Thank you. I need help. We all want to put it in the alley. Put it out in Chippewa.